Now I am sure that you haven't been into water industry.
nufix,
take a look at one of latest projects of Singapore, you will see how they have increased their landmass, created a fresh water reservoir as well as new business model to make money from the thin air.
you see here a large hotel, resort and casino complex standing on a land which did not exist several years ago. A fresh water reservoir has been created through a barrage and desalisation, enough to store 10% of Singapore water needs. The new created landmass is worth billions of USD.
Apparently, yes I did, and that I can assure you, that importing water is still vital for Singapore, if all the fresh water that Singapore needs, could be generated by Singapore itself, Singapore would have done it since a decade ago, but the fact that Singapore is still depending its water supply on Batam and Johor (Malaysia) tells you that turning salt water into ready to drink and use water is not Singapore's main water source.
You talk too far and too big you know, all this technology and that billion $$$, save it, let't talk about the basics first. All right, here's if you wanted to be detail about it, let's make a list of the drawbacks that Singapore will find if it tries to provide water all by itself.
Land:
Desalination alone needs a huge landmass to store unprocessed water, boiler, mineral stabilizer, and processed water reservoirs. While this all could be met by countries with numerous Desalination facilities such as India, Japan, USA, one can not forget that they yield a huge landmass that they could use to build all of those facilities, and yet they don't make it as their main water ressource. In comparison to the Singapore, which is a city-state, such landmass will be very very hard to find even if they had to add more landmass by reclamating their shore lines.
Electricity or heat source:
Desalination always relate to boiling salt water and vaporize it, these boilers could be heated by using either electricity that separatedly generated or directly generated in the same facility, but either way Singapore needs to work more on that. Normally countries that have many desalination facilities use nuclear powered heat sources, which is almost impossible to be built in Singapore due to its limited Landmass (again).
The solution to that is more import on electricity. This could lead to a higher cost of water.
Now the question should be, if Indonesia cut water, as well as gas and electricity, where would Singapore get electricity to boil those waters and process it, from? Of course there are other alternatives such as using coal, but do you know who's the biggest coal producer in the region? a country that starts with an "I", rhymes with "do" in the middle, and ends with an "A". Even if they finally manage to buy coal from Australia, how long until they completed the facilities to burn the coal? not to mention the question that will always come for a city state nation, does Singapore have enough available land to build such alternative energy generators?
Reservoir facilities:
Reserving processed water means placing it in a big chunk of artificial lake or huge water tanks, as long as it is far away from the sea, we can't dump the water back to the basin. And something tells me that it will need more landmass, which Singapore lacks of.
For example: Water treatment plant and reservoir in my hometown. Water treatment is a little bit different with desalination, it simply turns shitty water into ready to drink water, but its reservoirs have basically the same technical similarities to any water processing facilities. So, my hometown is a home for some 250.000 people, has an area of 937,47 Km² and is located on Riau province with soil dominated by peat (which is not suitable for earth water), and these water facilities already took a huge part of the town, and still, it is not becoming our main water ressource and is never enough.
In comparison, Singapore has an area only 716, 1 km2 with a population of 5.4 million, so how big could Singapore build to conserve and reserve its water supply if it is going to provide water all by itself? how big processing facilities could Singapore build if it is going to provide water all by itself? Get the picture now?
The bottom line is, a city-state nation, regardless how rich it is, can never be independent in the fields of energy and water, one way of another, they will have to buy them from somewhere else.
